Welcome to the Piano World Piano ForumsOver 2.5 million posts about pianos, digital pianos, and all types of keyboard instruments
Join the World's Largest Community of Piano Lovers
(it's free)
It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

You can't double notate it, because you can't have two accidentals on the same note. So in this case (and in a lot of 20th century music when this happens more often) is that you just notate it like two notes, then join them with a single (forked) stem.

edit: the forum is not letting me play with whitespace so looks weird..

I meant double flat or double sharp.. but on second look he, to my not-so-advanced understanding of theory, could have just made the flat a sharp and bunch them up into a chord together.

Mark, in my Henle edition the chord is notated like this:

If I understand what you are asking - and I'm not sure that I do - how would a double flat or a double sharp solve the issue of having to play a B-flat and a B-natural (measure 170) and an A-flat and an A-natural (measure 171) at the same time?

An A-sharp and a G-sharp are not in accord with the harmonic "vocabulary" of the key in question. Chopin, it appears, knew his theory.

First of all you'd have a clash of TOO MANY ACCIDENTALS. And secondly it would be off theoretically. and thirdly (just thought about it) you would confuse the heck out of the pianists: the A would actually sound higher than the Bb which is as confusing as it can get.

Mark_C
Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member
Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 21044
Loc: New York

Originally Posted By: Nikolas

....and thirdly (just thought about it) you would confuse the heck out of the pianists: the A would actually sound higher than the Bb which is as confusing as it can get....

Yes. I think some people will think this is nuts, and will wonder what you're talking about at all -- but in a pure sense it is so. Not, of course, in how they sound on the piano but in a pure sense.

Which, by the way, is actually part of what you had said just before that:

Quote:

it would be off theoretically

Chopin was into the theory of the music and of the voice leading as much as anybody, I think even including Bach. He wouldn't have been caught dead writing it as an A#, because, in terms of what's going on in the line of that voice, it's not an A-sharp and can't be an A-sharp.

What this demonstrates is the flexibility and universality of the notation system. Although this is unconventional, it should be immediately obvious what it means and how it is played, even to one who has never seen something like this before.

Mark_C
Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member
Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 21044
Loc: New York

Well, I wouldn't say it "should." I think that if someone like Joel found it confusing, that's enough right there to make us realize there's no 'should' about it. This might be kind of circular, but that's how I think it is.

Chopin was into the theory of the music and of the voice leading as much as anybody, I think even including Bach. He wouldn't have been caught dead writing it as an A#, because, in terms of what's going on in the line of that voice, it's not an A-sharp and can't be an A-sharp.